So Far Away
by tabbycatcrume
Summary: This is a series finale ship fix using only available characters. Some ships (Japril and Calzona) are fixed off scene because people were fired. No one from season 10 dies. I do not own these characters. If I did, they would have been treated way nicer.


Grey's Anatomy Series Finale: So Far Away

Amelia Shepherd woke up in a hospital bed surrounded by tubes and machines. A nurse noted her alert condition.

"She's awake. Page her doctor."

Bailey and Webber arrived first. Bailey smiled. "You're awake. Thank God." As she said that, her pager went off. "Dang it. I'll be back. It's good to see you."

Webber was grinning. "I've paged your husband. He's in surgery."

Amelia was confused. "Who's my husband?"

Andrew DeLuca walked in. "Hello, Amelia. It's good to have you back."

"Who are you to me?" Amelia asked.

"Yes...okay...you don't know that I'm your doctor." He scribbled something down.

"You're a resident and..."

Andrew shook his head and took out his iPad. "I'm going to ask a series of questions. What is your name?"

"Amelia Shepherd."

"What is your job?"

"I'm chief of neuro at Grey Sloan Memorial."

"What year is it?"

"It's 2019. I want to say about July."

He took a deep breath. "We're going to do some scans."

She didn't want scans. She wanted answers. "Can you please tell me what's wrong?"

"I'm Dr. Andrew DeLuca, your neurosurgeon. Don't you remember hiring me?"

"No." Amelia had been certain that he had been her..."I hired you?"

"Yes, to replace your brother, Derek."

That didn't make sense. "You're too young to be an attending."

He smiled at that. "So is Maggie. You teased us about it mercilessly."

"Maggie?"

"You know, Meredith's half sister, and my wife. You don't remember Maggie Pierce?"

"Of course I remember Maggie." Amelia had lived with Maggie. "You're married? But you broke up. I don't understand..."

Alex came in. "I heard you were awake."

"Alex!"

Andrew looked at him. "She thinks it's July 2019."

Alex's expression would've been funny had the situation not been so serious. "It's May 2015."

"What?"

Andrew took a seat. "I was hired with Maggie in May 2014. I'm her trailing spouse. I noticed your erratic behavior, memory lapses, and you discussed incidents that had never occurred. Your work up showed a benign brain tumor; it had been growing at least five years."

"Five...I had a tumor?"

"After surgery there was swelling," Andrew explained. "You then had several infections. It's been eleven weeks since your surgery. They'll be deficits. With a tumor this size, it'll be six months before you can operate. The good news is, you shouldn't have hallucinations anymore."

There was just one big problem Amelia needed addressed. "How do I tell what's real and what's not?"

Andrew scooter his chair closer. "Why don't you tell us what you think is real? I'll record it so we can figure it out." Alex grabbed a seat from outside and sat next to him. A few minutes in, Alex asked to put this on speakerphone. Everyone listening was stunned. A long time later they stared at Amelia, silent.

Alex finally spoke. "I just can't even...I'm trying to decide where to start."

Webber counted to ten before speaking. "Amelia, do you think Bailey would allow the shenanigans you recalled? The situations you described are nonsensical."

Alex suggested she go further back to figure out when her hallucinations began. He pieced the timeline together. "You have most of your memories intact until May of 2013," Alex explained. "That's when you came here."

"I didn't come that early," Amelia insisted.

Alex disagreed. "You came to cover during Derek's paternity leave. You showed up early to shadow him, which was good since Meredith delivered early. You being here prevented an accident that could have killed intern Heather Brooks and Webber, but we thought that you only were hanging around for sex. We...we caught you making out with this visiting doctor. I think her name was Lauren."

"Lauren...was she blonde?" Amelia vaguely recalled her.

"Yes. You stayed for a few weeks, left to break up with your fiancée, and when you returned I was dealing with transferring my father to another hospital and you were dealing with April and Arizona. You found them drunk in a closet. April was trying to try on Arizona's leg." What Alex would have given to have pictures of that.

"I think I'd have remembered that." Try as she might, Amelia couldn't.

"That's when the three of you became friends. You and April moved into Mark's apartment about then. After Yang won the Harper Avery and—"

"She won?" Amelia interrupted. "I thought she wasn't eligible because the foundation owns the hospital."

Webber answered for Alex. "There are 72 Avery hospitals and they practically own Mass General. If she wasn't eligible, we'd have known years ago."

"True." Why hadn't Amelia thought of that before?

"Yang won and took over her ex's hospital in Switzerland. She took Shane and Heather with her. Those two just got married. I don't know what Altman runs now."

Webber did. "She's still stationed in Germany running the military hospital. Altman is married to a heart surgeon, Nathan. He worked with you on two patients. He and Hunt are like brothers."

That's not what Amelia recalled. "Nathan was involved with Hunt's sister. She was kidnapped—"

"Amelia, Hunt is an only child. Nathan came here with their children. They have a son from Syria and one from Jordan. Kepner and Avery operated on his younger son's hands." Webber still couldn't believe the Averys had managed to create a miracle for that boy. "They're back again. Her baby, Theo, needs fetal surgery. She visited you. Her family is staying in your house."

"I have a house?" Amelia didn't remember this.

Webber waited a moment before speaking again. "Hunt stepped down as chief to be...Kepner is head of trauma. She's practically been running it since she was a resident anyway. She might as well get the credit and pay for it. I'm chief, though I'm training Bailey to take over, and I'm joining Catherine in Boston. I'm hoping we'll get married. Your mentor, Tom Kovasic, is giving me a run for my money."

"Maggie and I are going with him. We're taking leave and returning to Boston for a few months," Andrew told them. "She wants to spend time with her parents after her mother's cancer scare."

"I thought she died." Amelia remembered her passing away after a grueling clinical trial.

Andrew was happy to tell her, "She was stage one. She got a double mastectomy, implants, lipo and a mini tummy tuck. She looks hot. Don't tell Maggie I said that. She and Maggie's dad are on their second honeymoon."

Speak of the devil, Maggie walked into the room. "Hi, sister," she said, gently kissing her cheek.

Staring down at her belly, Amelia asked, "You're pregnant?"

Maggie rubbed her hand lovingly over her bump in hopes that the boy inside would stop kicking her bladder. "Yes. That's the theme of the year. I'm pregnant, Callie is pregnant, Altman is pregnant, April is pregnant—"

"April is having a baby? With Matthew?"

"Huh? Why would she have a baby with a guy she dumped in front of 300 people?" Alex asked.

"I thought he forgave her, they married, and she quit her job to do God's calling of working with the homeless for free." That's what Arizona had told everyone. Amelia didn't see them in love, but okay.

Alex snorted. "Why would God make you go through fourteen years of specialized training to quit? Not only are you not using your God given talents, you took up a spot for a person who would have. Plus life costs money. Matthew made what, five bucks before deductions. Yeah, God's calling is for you to stay a trauma surgeon in order to pay your med school loans and childcare. DeLuca, are you sure you got all her tumor?"

DeLuca was waiting for notification that the CT was free. "I'm checking."

Webber added to Karev's statement. "By the way, Matthew is Christian, not a human doormat, and in the scenario you described, we are horrid people. As members of AA, do you think that we'd see Kepner hung over and not intervene? After her second patient loss she'd have been flagged, and with the third we would have had a counselor waiting for her in the employee lounge. Kepner is family. We take care of family."

Maggie felt the same way about the redhead who one day might be her sister-in-law. "Okay, we haven't known each other very long, but I am not the needy whiner you described. I am strong and great. While I don't need a man to complete me, I know how to get one on my own. Men are like buses. Another one will come along in five minutes. To think that I would fight over the same man as my sister, and then sleep with the same guy that her sister Lexie slept with, that ain't right. If Jackson also slept with Molly, would he get a free car wash or bag of caramel corn or something? That's sick. I have too much brilliance, talent and beauty to get involved in two love triangles, especially with a stepbrother who lives and sleeps with his ex, and loves her so much that he'd convert religions. I wouldn't convert Fahrenheit into Celsius for my ex."

Andrew laughed. "Yeah, I saw her refuse to convert a dollar into four quarters for her twelfth grade boyfriend, and Maggie needed a dollar bill for something. It was hilarious. That's how we met."

Maggie continued. "The Jackson you described is too creepy and gross for words, though not as creepy as Matthew. April told me she never loved him but accepted his proposal after three months of rocky dating because he did it in front of a hundred people. That same night she proposed to Jackson, but he was mad at her so she was going to marry a boobie prize, and the guy who you described is pretty damn pathetic."

Amelia defended him. "He was a good guy."

Maggie was not buying it. "Good guys at least wait until the mortician is done embalming the love of their life before joining eHarmony. What, did he take his profile picture beside her coffin?"

"They fell back in love," Amelia claimed.

Webber countered that. "How do you fall back in love when one of you was never in love in the first place? If they did marry, he could never get April pregnant because clearly he's been neutered. It's like you think religion makes you dumb, which is a real insult to communities of faith. April immediately marrying Matthew on his wife's grave after another public proposal is not a fairy tale ending. It's not even legal. Washington state has a three day waiting period on wedding licenses, they don't do waivers, and there is no way Arizona would miss Alex's wedding."

"Am I supposed to apologize because my hallucinations didn't make sense?" Amelia was incredulous. "That's not happening."

"Jackson Avery will always love April Kepner. April Kepner will always love Jackson Avery. Jackson told me what his mentor said to him. If you love someone, tell them. Jackson stood up in a barn to tell the world that he loved April. I don't know what everyone thinks about April, but I know what you thought about Mark. If April Kepner and Jackson Avery aren't meant to be together, it means Mark Sloan's dying words are nothing. Are you saying Mark Sloan wasted his last conscious breath?" Webber hoped that was not what she was saying.

Maggie said, "I don't know Mark, but the version of me you described sounds horrid and contradictory. How can I fear intimacy yet be desperate for a man? How can I be chief and insecure? How can I want to know my birth mother but never ask my birth father questions? And what kind of friend ignores her friend's mental health crisis in order to make out with her man?"

"I thought they were divorce." Amelia said.

"I don't care if April and Jackson were divorced. They were still living together and having sex. That's her man." Maggie was not one to get in the middle of other's relationships. "If April ever married anyone other than Jackson, I'd say her brain tumor was twice as big as yours, and if I ever acted in the manner you described, mine would be four times as large. She and Jackson are happily married, disgustingly in love, and expecting again."

"I thought after Samuel they would wait to recover from..." Amelia didn't finish her sentence about how the loss of their son had devastated their marriage.

"You mean you thought having a newborn would make them practice birth control?" Maggie asked. "April showed up pregnant to their six week checkup. Who does that?"

"What?" Amelia had barely felt well enough to pee before her six week checkup, and she could never look at a squirt bottle in quite the same way again. She was pleased to hear that Samuel was healthy and alive, and shocked that April felt well enough to have sex so soon. "Shouldn't she have still been sitting on a donut shaped pillow?"

"We were in the ER, April said she felt something, she and Jackson went into the lounge, and ten minutes later April walked out holding the New Years baby. None of us could believe it. They were just staring at each other in awe and Jackson was kissing her and saying he loved them. I checked on her later. Samuel was asleep in the bassinet, Jackson was asleep in her bed topless, she's in his shirt, and they're spooning." Arizona, Nicole and Maggie were speechless when they saw the sight.

"Already?" Amelia couldn't imagine. Birth recovery for her involved wearing the world's biggest maxi pad that someone had thoughtfully coated in non-alcoholic witch hazel, aloe vera gel, and stuck in the freezer. The flesh between her legs had felt as if someone had lit it on fire, stomped on it to put out the flames, and then lit it on fire again. "They were spooning already?"

"Yes, already. We examined her, and it was like Samuel had been deflated before emerging and then he fleshed all out on the other side. Her stomach was all flat and she didn't have stretch marks, and her lady parts looked like she'd given birth four weeks before. When they were cleared we went to their condo. They had cleaners and a nighttime baby nurse. April said Samuel is on formula after midnight. They slept for eight hours, and they're eating waffles made by a hired chef and cuddling, and before you know it she's knocked up. When we asked her which doctor cleared her to have sex, she said Jackson."

Amelia couldn't help but laugh. They all did. "Figures."

Maggie continued, "They'll have a nine month old and newborn twins, a boy and a girl, all in the same calendar year. Depending on the birthdates, they might be in the same grade in school. No one is ever letting them live it down."

"Where's April?"

"She and Jackson are doing wish list surgeries. They work great together. If Jackson wanted to build a highway from here to Hawaii, April would buy the cement. He's twice the surgeon he would be without her." Maggie had never seen anything like it.

Andrew agreed. "They're in Montana turning an intestine into an esophagus. It's online. She was also in on an ear reconstruction, and one time she had surgery outside."

"Surgery outside?"

"I can't believe you can't remember that." Andrew was still in awe. "She and Edwards rocked it. Kepner is famous. It was all over Twitter, and she quickly followed up with her ebooks." Finding Your Footing After Failing had been a top twenty book on Amazon, but Waffles After Church: Finding Common Ground in Mixed Faith Marriages was number one.

"She and Edwards work together?" Amelia didn't want Edwards with any other surgeon.

"Edwards needed more trauma hours after she did the surgery with you on Nicole Herman. She's turning into a trauma junkie."

"Herman. I blinded her." Amelia had saved the fetal surgeon's life but at a steep cost.

Andrew looked puzzled. "Nicole's been clear for over a year. She and Arizona are in OR2 with their fellow Karin. They'll be excited that you're awake. AAA is back in business."

"AAA?"

"Amelia, April and Arizona." Andrew had secretly thought of them as conjoined triplets. That was before he saw April with Jackson. He was surprised they didn't get in accidents from staring at each other instead of their surroundings. "That's what we call the three of you, AAA. They'll be happy, and so will Edwards and Wilson."

"Where is Edwards?"

"She's wedding shopping with Jo and Penny," Alex answered.

"You and Wilson are getting married?" Amelia had figured that would happen.

"It's a double ceremony. Me and Jo, Edwards and Diaz."

"Diaz?" Was that the patient Edwards had dated who died?

"Kyle Diaz, the dermatologist from Seattle Presbyterian that April hooked her up with." April had surprised Stephanie on her birthday with a spa day, condoms, and Kyle, his face and once in a lifetime butt looking hot as ever. "They're pushing April to be matron of honor. April says that's too much punishment and that having attendants will point out that we don't have enough friends."

Maggie took mild offense at that. "Hey, I'm their friend."

Andrew disagreed. "You're friendly, but your besties are Herman, Bailey, Webber and Torres. That said, I think what Alex really means is that he has no friends."

"Dude, I have friends." Alex knew Grey and Yang had his back, and once this blew over, he would have Callie, Arizona, Jackson and Ben. April was probably never coming back around.

"None that you can talk to in public," Andrew reminded him. "Yang and Grey are gone and you ticked off Avery and Kepner, which ticked off everyone else."

"Can't they take a joke?" Alex never stopped picking at April but pretended it was good natured.

"You asked if they waited for the placenta to emerge before having sex." Andrew had turned away so he could technically say he hadn't seen April punch Alex in the face.

"Like I was the only one thinking it. Don't worry, they'll change their mind before their vow renewal next month. They need me or they'll have a lopsided bridal party. April wouldn't like that." Alex's phone buzzed. "It's Carina. Callie is in labor."

"Carina works here?" Amelia asked.

Andrew nodded. "Yes, she and her wife, Eliza, came about six months ago. Callie chose her as her doctor."

"I thought Callie couldn't have babies." Amelia thought she had adhesions.

Alex stood up. "You thought a lot of things that aren't true. She has to have a repeat C-section, which was scheduled for next week. I guess baby Ruby had other plans. I gotta go. Feel better."

Meredith Grey brushed past Alex on his way out. She hugged Amelia as tight as she could without hurting her. "You scared me! Don't ever scare me like that again!"

"Meredith—"

"We were worried about you!" Meredith pulled up the chair Alex had vacated. The others took this opportunity to slip out and allow them privacy. "Alex put you on speakerphone and I had to hear all that utter nonsense about everyone cheating, divorcing and dying, me getting beat like I owed someone money, April getting cut up like a horror movie victim, and you and Maggie treating my house like it was sorority row. Do you really think I'm such a crappy mom that I'd let you mess up my home and screw around in front of my children? Do you think I'd let you loudly bang guys you picked up on Craigslist while my kids listened? Amelia, if you weren't healing from brain surgery, I'd smack you upside your head."

"You sound like Maggie."

"Maggie is right. She is too good for all that, and so are you. Take it personally when I say I'd never live with two grown women who needed more babysitting than my own kids. The way you put it, you've regressed to being drunken teens and I'm little more than the maid, doing laundry and washing dirty dishes while you had the sex I wasn't having."

Amelia redirected the conversation. "Where have you been?"

"I was watching the surgery. I'm so glad you're awake, though not as happy as my bosses will be. I was supposed to be here for a week, not three months." Meredith had scheduled vacation. She was now using FMLA.

"Wait. You don't work here anymore?"

Meredith shook her head. "I moved with Derek to DC."

"I thought you weren't going to DC." Amelia remembered the ugly fights and Derek leaving them behind.

"That was before they upped my pay and gave me a half a million dollar research grant. You should see what I'm working on. For starters, I'm looking into abdominal wall transplants. It'll be perfect for vets. I'm also researching making mini livers using a polymer created by one of my mom's friends. They had such a great relationship. My mom was more like her mentor. I'll never have the best memories of Ellis, but I understand her more as a person. If we were the same age, she would be my Christina. Speaking of Christina, the flights to Switzerland from DC are not too bad."

"But you're out in DC all alone with three kids."

Meredith stilled. "Three? They told you?"

"Told me what?"

Meredith beamed. "I'm pregnant again. So it'll be Zola, Bailey and this baby. If it's a boy we're naming him Mark. If it's a girl, Lexie."

"You're not going to name her Ellis?" Amelia remembered little Ellis.

"Hell no. I loved my mom. That doesn't mean I liked her, and I'm not alone. I have family and great colleagues. Leah is doing research in Derek's lab. I have dinner with my family at least once a week and we call all the time. My half-sister Molly's husband was moved to Virginia for a year. I'm so loving my niece. Thatcher moved out there with his new wife who is younger than me. Whatever. He got a job at the White House. He's surprisingly good at it. But Molly is great. Derek loves her—"

"Derek?" Amelia's thoughts had stopped the first time Meredith mentioned his name. She was finally able to speak again. "You said Derek."

"You know, your favorite brother. Lexie left a huge hole in our hearts. It'll never be filled, but having Molly around has helped."

"Derek is here? I thought he...I thought he died."

"You also thought that April and Jackson's son died, but instead of sending flowers and food, I interrupted people praying for them in church so I could try to get laid. I mean, how unfeeling is that?" Meredith couldn't believe Amelia thought that little of her.

"I thought Derek died in a car crash."

"More crashes? Really? The way you put it, no one in this hospital would have insurance." Meredith shook her head. "DeLuca beat up, Jo's ex run over by a car. Amelia, if Jo wasn't Jo, she wouldn't have been able to get a medical license. Ellis Grey was not a fraud, Harper Avery is not a pervert, Alex Karev is not a felon, April Kepner is not a drunk trolling bars for dates. Our work lives are exciting, but our personal lives are mundane. We are too old and tired to do even a tenth of the things that you said that we did—-hold up. Your husband is trying to get your attention."

Carefully turning her head, Amelia saw Owen Hunt walk into the room. Meredith slipped out to give them privacy.

"Honey, you're awake. Finally." Pulling up a chair, he held his wife's hand, bringing it up to kiss. "I was worried..."

"Owen, I missed you. I thought..."

"Thought what?"

"You weren't here and I didn't know...where were you?" Amelia wondered.

"I was with Megan," Owen explained.

"You were with your sister?" Webber had said Owen didn't have a sister.

Owen laughed. "Oh, goodness, there is so much that we have to go over. Honey, I don't have a sister. Megan is our daughter."

Amelia lay her hand on her stomach. "I would think I'd remember giving birth again."

"Her mother is a Malawian teenager who gave birth in our emergency room. She had preeclampsia. April and Arizona caught it. Megan was born with spina bifida, and her mother wanted a better life for her. She was going to have to go back to Malawi, the father was dead, and she wanted her little girl to stay in America. When April thought about how much I wanted children, she said maybe it was a sign from God, that Derek and Meredith had gotten married and adopted a Malawian with spina bifida and that maybe we were supposed to, too. I wasn't here because Megan was in surgery. She's going to be fine."

"She is?"

Owen reassured her. "Megan is fine and she misses her mother."

"She does?" Amelia began to cry.

"I know we moved really fast. We started dating, I bought Derek's house, we got married and adopted a baby and we found out about your tumor. I know that this is overwhelming. Just know that we love each other and you're both going to heal. I've stepped down as chief. The board already did interviews. Kepner has taken over trauma. When Webber retires Bailey will be chief, I'll return to trauma, and Kepner will become chief of general surgery. From the work she's doing now, one day she'll run Mass Gen. For now I'm working part time. I want to be there for Megan, and for you. This is the start of our lives. So I'm going to kiss you and go see our daughter and FaceTime with you so you can see her, too."

"Where is she? Our daughter, who is she with?" Amelia couldn't wait to meet her.

"She's with Derek."

"Derek." Her brother was alive.

"I know, it's bad to work on family members, but he's the only one that I could trust to do the surgery." Derek had not only agreed, but allowed Owen to watch. Meredith had stayed by his side the whole time.

"She's with Derek. Megan is with Derek." Amelia had a husband and a daughter who was with her brother. Derek was here.

"Do you want me to send him in?"

"Please. Please, I need to see my brother."

Hunt squeezed her hand and left. Amelia was overcome with emotion. She didn't know what it was like to be someone's wife. She didn't remember their relationship at all, at least not a healthy one. Her love for Hunt was turbulent, or maybe not. They'd been cleared by a social worker doing a home study. There had to be good love between them, along with temperance and patience. Amelia didn't know how to be a mother to a living child. Her son had died forty-two minutes after he was born, though he lived on through the lives he saved by donating all of his organs. She was so proud of her son for that. Amelia didn't remember anything about her daughter. She did remember Bailey and Zola, at first feeling useless and inadequate, then gaining confidence and realizing that she could do this. She could mother a child, or at least aunt one. There was so much to relearn since she no longer knew.

But Amelia did know what it felt like to be a sister.

She had missed her brother. It had all just been a dream, yet it felt so real. She wanted him to tell her that everything would be okay. Amelia wanted them to commiserate over their mother and life and work, and for Derek to tell her that she did measure up to him. She needed him so badly. She needed him to tell her that she was enough. Maybe then she would believe it. But most of all, she wanted to tell him how much she loved him. He was the best brother one could ever ask for and if he was really there, she would never take him for granted again. Staring through the sliding doors to her room, she smiled as she saw the familiar face she'd wanted to see in forever.

"Derek?"

Amelia opened up her arms and let her brother envelop her in his warm hug. He buried his face in her neck, and she breathed him in. Derek. Her brother was here. Derek was alive. She'd been told that he was alive, yet she hadn't believed it until this moment. He had been so far away, and now he was right here. There was so much she wanted to ask him, so much she had to say. It could all wait. It was enough for Derek to simply hold her.

For the first time in forever, Amelia was home.

Meredith stood outside the room and looked around the unit, taking it all in. Bailey was standing in the corner, fussing with Webber about her husband Ben's latest career choice. Andrew was trying to help Maggie find a comfortable seating position at seven months along. Good luck with that. The six interns Meredith couldn't name to save her life were at the nurse's station watching April and Jackson's surgery. It was an awesome surgery. She and Christina talked about how much April has blossomed during one of their daily FaceTime chats. When Meredith and Christina teased her via text about never getting a Harper Avery award, she said she had a Jackson Avery, a Samuel Avery, and soon a Harper and Harriet Avery, and that was more than enough. Meredith and Christina bet Jackson would be happy to add a few more Averys to their growing collection. April said that they were probably right.

Alex texted Meredith again. He and Arizona were helping Callie prep for her C-section. At 38 weeks, baby Ruby was considered full term and Sophia would be a big sister. When Meredith talked to her while visiting Zola and Bailey in daycare, she was super excited. Carina DeLuca had told Arizona and Callie that they could be cautiously optimistic. She was worried that a vaginal birth would rupture Callie's uterus and possibly lead to a hysterectomy. Meredith's doctor had the same concerns. She was having a tubal ligation at the time of her surgical delivery. They weren't sure yet, but they thought this baby was a girl. She would have a little Lexie.

Lexie. 

God, Meredith missed her baby sister. She loved Molly and Maggie, but they were their own people; they weren't Lexie. She missed Lexie's beautiful crooked smile and her genius and her ramblings. She missed Lexie with everything that was in her. She missed her moping around with George. She missed George and his romantic mishaps and amazing patient saves. She missed Izzie baking cupcakes and eating tubs of butter.

Meredith especially missed Lexie.

She had been so sick of Lexie's messy relationship with Mark, and now, what she wouldn't do to see Lexie's smiling face, to berate Mark for his wandering pee-pee, to watch them perform surgeries and love one another. They were supposed to give Sophia a brother and a sister. Lexie and Callie were supposed to make up and babysit each other's kids and glare at Mark along with Arizona when he made them mad. Being in this hospital, it reminded Meredith of Lexie and all the good things she had lost. She had grown up in this hospital. She had lived in this hospital.

Part of her had died in this hospital.

But today was not the day for the bad.

Amelia was finally awake. Megan was going to be okay. She'd checked on Teddy and Nathan. Baby Theo had made it through surgery and would cook for another three months. Next month she and Derek would stand up for April and Jackson in a field of butterflies or something. Meredith had tuned the details out. She was more of a post it note and tumor drawings on the wall type of person. But April was a happy, glowy person, as had been Lexie, and George, and Izzie, who, after seeking therapy after a trying year in which she'd had cancer, hallucinations and her best friend die, had finished her surgical residency and married Finn of all people. They lived in Denver with their three children, one of whom was adopted and had special needs. Izzie was a great doctor and mom, and while they missed those that they loved and lost, the ones they loved and kept were just that more dear to them.

So Meredith would once again wear a dress that she didn't like for a friend that she loved. She would repeat the process in December when Alex and Jo and Stephanie and Kyle married. She would hold those she loved close, even if they were so far away from her. Right now she and Derek and the kids stayed in Alex's home, aka, her old home. They had a pot luck once a week and ordered pizza with everyone over. On Sundays April corralled everyone to her church, and they'd gone because she made stacks of waffles afterwards. The guys and the residents and interns went for runs. All the pregnant ladies went for walks. And ice cream. A lot of time they walked to the ice cream shop, took a cab back and called it a day. They were all in this together.

Meredith missed this.

Seeing how she looked longingly at her old place, Alex, Jo, Derek and Meredith made a deal. Derek owed her for stepping up his career when he was supposed to step down. After speaking with the president, they were setting up a research institute at Grey Sloan. It would take at least a year to get it together. During that time Jackson and April would move to their penthouse located in their same building. Alex and Jo would move into their place, which was on the same floor as Kyle and Stephanie's place, and Meredith and Derek would return to her home and make it their own. Derek's architect was already working on plans to create a space tailored to their liking, not just one where the bathtub covered Meredith's boobs and knees at the same time. Meredith would focus more on research for the next few years than surgery, and if Webber was right, she would win more Harper Avery awards than her mom.

Christina was going to be so jealous.

She was being paged. Listening to the sounds around her, everyone was being paged. Something big was coming in. Meredith adjusted the ferry boat scrub cap she'd permanently borrowed from her husband and paused at the threshold of Amelia's room. Derek was still in the same position, head tucked into Amelia's neck as he rocked her back and forth and Amelia told him how much she loved him, the tears rolling down her face into his thick salt and pepper hair.

"Let's move people," Bailey yelled at the interns. "When I move you move, at a run, a run!"

Meredith fell in with the group of surgeons running towards the ER, then she slowed a bit and made a slight detour. She hadn't known that the chapel existed until April showed her a few weeks ago. This was where April came to pray that she could help fix this broken world and comfort those who lived in it. She had asked everyone to continue praying for Megan and Amelia and all the others who were in need. Meredith was not religious, but she did find comfort in lighting candles and partaking in a moment of silence to think of loved ones. Coming into the space, she saw for the first time that every candle was lit. Meredith looked up and smiled.

"Thank You."

With that she turned around and headed to the ER. As Derek always said, it was a beautiful day to save lives. For Meredith, that meant it was always a beautiful day.

The End.


End file.
